6 Things To Do with Potatoes

Reader’s Digest: Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things

If you’re only French frying and baking your potatoes, you’re only tapping a fraction of their potential. From polishing silverware to fixing shoes, there are plenty of ways to put these starchy staples to work all around the house. Here are six of our favourite new uses for potatoes.

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Add potatoes to a salty soup

Is your soup too salty? Throw in a few chunks of potatoes and they’ll absorb the excess salt!

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Use a Potato to Restore Beaten-Up Shoes

Try as you might, your old shoes are just too scuffed to take a shine anymore. Before you give up on them, cut a potato in half and rub it all over the scuffed surface. After that, polish the shoes to a brilliant shine.

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Use Potatoes to Remove Stains From Your Hands

Your family’s favourite carrot soup is simmering on the stove, and you’ve got the orange hands to show for it. Otherwise hard-to-remove stains from peeling carrots or ­handling pumpkin come right off if you rub your hands with a raw, cut potato.

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Use a Potato to Make a Hot or Cold Compress

Potatoes retain heat and cold well. The next time you need a hot compress, boil a potato, wrap it in a tea towel and apply to the area. Refrigerate the boiled potato if you need a cold compress.

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Use Potatoes to Remove Tarnish from ­Silverware

High tea is being served at your house later today, and you’re out of silver polish. Don’t panic! Grab a bunch of potatoes and boil them up. Remove them from the water and save them for another use. Place your silverware in the remaining water and let it sit for an hour. Then remove the silverware and wash. The tarnish should have disappeared!

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Use Potatoes to Fight Puffy Eyes

The only thing worse than a terrible night’s sleep is waking up to find those enormous bags under your eyes. Instead of reaching for that expensive eye cream, apply slices of raw, cold potatoes to your closed eyes to make the puffiness go away.

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